


scrub it clean

by wraithes



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, pre-game, too tender for their own good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 15:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20548376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithes/pseuds/wraithes
Summary: In the dark room, a match is struck. Light blooms, expands, and dies out in a moment's notice. Ludwig loves Simon like the moonlight loves himself.





	scrub it clean

The esteemed hunter of the newfound church had spent hours dredging through beast refuse and the stench of death, cutting through ungodly sinew and evaporating fur and flesh right before his very eyes. And yet, somehow, this was the most violent part.

When all was said and done, Ludwig had found himself creekside, the robes of his holy garb peeled from his flesh and held tight between strong hands. He beat the fabric down against the rocks, the rushing current peeling away the blood and dark matter of innards from the ornate embroidery and silk accents - whisked away as if it had never happened. It was almost meditative these days amidst the scourge, an untamable chaos that left much to be desired in terms of repetition - and Ludwig had once loved repetition. A few more resonant slaps of wet fabric against stone, and the robes were like new, smelling of what little crisp, clean water was left in the villages. As he peeled back from the water’s edge, he felt the presence of a familiar approach.

Always so languid, like a cat slinking through darkness, Simon appeared at his backside.

“Simon.”

“Ludwig.”

Silence. Ludwig moved from the water’s edge to throw the wet robes against the green grass, watching how the fabric splayed out so beautifully, catching the final pastel throws of the vibrant sunset. He could feel Simon’s gaze upon him, like a weight dangling dangerously close over his head - even worse, the weight felt as if it was held up by a thread rather than a rope, threatening to drop at any moment.

Simon liked to watch the other hunter - it was his job, after all, an assistant assigned to the Holy Blade by the church in order to soothe the poor man’s paranoia. Being a harrowed hunter, he was trained to sniff out the early signs of beasthood - and Ludwig, though sometimes seemingly infallible with his little dancing lights and moonlit sword, needed constant reassurance that he was more man than beast. It was merely a happenstance that despite their glaring differences, they happened to get along. Simon might even admit, perhaps after a drink of warm liquor, that he preferred his company to any other’s. Even worse, he sought it out.

So Simon watched, but more for his enjoyment than anything else.

“I do not like it when you stare at me like that, Simon.”

“Can’t say I know what you mean.”

Silence. Both of the hunters, though wildly different, smirked at the exchange. Their banter was habitual, the back and forth always enough to coax out a snort or a snicker. Simon lowered himself to the ground beside the tired church hunter - it was his turn to beat the blood from his linens and splash his half-covered face clean of the gunk.

While Simon slipped his lean body out from the tattered clothes, Ludwig took his turn in watching how the inches of flesh and tired sinew exposed themselves to him. The little lights in the back of his head flickered like something had excited them, their nebulous forms jittering about as his tired gaze appraised the harrowed hunter. Somehow, the bow-hunter was less violent when he brought his shirt down across the rocks and the turbulent current. He did it with a finesse that Ludwig lacked - a contradiction. Ludwig was supposed to be the careful one.

He was also supposed to be a man of restraint - long ago he had vowed to give up earthly delights and pleasures. He said, before Laurence’s counsel, that it was to prove his worthiness of the guiding moonlight and dedication to the Church ; but in reality, he was simply too fickle and too busy with slaughtering beasts to think about drinking to get drunk and fucking to cut himself loose from the ever-suffocating net of his duties. Few men had tempted him, but none had followed through - it was for the better, Ludwig thought idly as he drew his gaze away from Simon. But the harrowed hunter was different, and even worse, observant.

They had long ago started their little game - chasing after one another without admitting it, skirting around touches, letting congratulatory hands on the back linger way past their platonic welcome, letting Simon teach the church hunter how to shoot a bow, slotted up behind him with nimble hands running over strong knuckles - right there, Ludwig hears Simon’s words again and again.

“What are you thinking about?”

Simon’s voice has a tendency to slither, a snake beneath his blood-drenched boots.

“Nothing.”

“You would think a man of your position would be a whole lot better at lying, considering all those secrets you keep.”

Ludwig huffs but sneaks a glimpse of Simon’s mouth as he speaks, how the thin lips shape the words. The lights in the back of his head flare up again, like a match struck in the darkness of night. Fog and smoke cloud his better judgement and his eyes fall further, watching the rise and fall of the man’s lithe chest, the bones of his sternum pressing up against the seemingly thin layer of scarred flesh. He had seen all of this before, of course - communal baths not uncommon among the men and women assigned purging duties. But it was just that, back then; a duty, an act that happened with a quickness and with little time for pleasure seeking. Naked bodies were just naked bodies after hours of hunting. But now, Ludwig looked to truly see, and that was the most dangerous part about it.

Before he had time to recant or to backtrack away from the other’s probing words, or shove his gaze away like the shameful thing it was, Simon was closer, and then even closer still.

“Are you_ looking_ at me, Ludwig,”

Simon asked, voice a serpent wrapped in velvet. His nimble hands were splayed across the grass then, inching forward towards the Church hunter’s knees.

“No, of course not. Men of the Church do not look.”

Ludwig’s voice was stiff and embarrassed, the heat from his face running in a line right down to his thighs as the harrowed hunter pushed closer. He smelled of chewed cloves and red-hot fire, Ludwig noted as the lights danced before his eyes. Part of him wondered if something poisonous had got him in the early morning hours - was he dying after all, was this his sordid end, had some half-dead thing sunk its teeth in him ; he considered it.

“Even blind men can want.”

Ludwig was quiet then, his wide lips set in a firm line as his eyes held the other there. He tried to hold him still with that authoritative stare, one that made men fall in line, made blades rise and fall on his command. But Simon was an unstoppable fire, a damned force of hellish nature - he kept moving, slowly but so sure of himself, like he had thought about doing this before.

“I do not like this game.”

Ludwig finally said, tight-lipped and growing nervous. Heat flourished up from his thighs, tightening in his abdomen. The lights were uncontrollable now, tugging at the back of his consciousness, pulling his thoughts this way and that. He swallowed the heat in his throat as Simon neared the end of his slow approach.

“I have to admit, I don’t like games much myself, Ludwig. I want to know what game you think I am playing,” Simon did the unthinkable then and pressed his calloused but nimble hand against the expanse of Ludwig’s bare chest, thumb sweeping a careful arc across the flesh. “Well, no matter, I suppose the only thing I care about is whether or not I am winning.”

Ludwig tensed. The worst thing about it, whatever this could be, was that Simon was winning. The holy hunter had surrendered in that moment, his wide shoulders dropping forward in some vulnerable defeat, letting his muscles free from their nervous-bound nature. It was as if the harrowed hunter was reaching into him, his palm plunging deep into the very center of his being, tickling the lights and all the heat that pulsed through him.

“You’d wave a white flag for me, Ludwig?”

Simon filled the space with a breathless laugh.

“Would you,” Ludwig reached forward with a hesitant hand, mirroring the other’s action with a too-tender touch of his palm, “_please be quiet_.”

Much to Ludwig’s approval, they both laughed in unison for a fleeting moment, as they had hundreds of times before. But now, things were different - the world around them was shifting, the gravity eating up the space between them, their bodies falling into eachother with perfect grace. Simon’s lithe arms found Ludwig with ease, pushing through the man’s guarded nature to loop up and over the strain in the hunter’s shoulders. He brought the raven-haired knight in by the neck as if he had practiced this all before, as if he had trained himself to saw right through the Holy Blade’s notorious nerves.

Ludwig sighed - it was an awful sound, a ragged little thing that dropped loose and wanton from his chapped lips. He couldn’t help it, and Simon knew it - he watched as the hallowed hunter restrained a chuckle, and thanked the gods that he was kind enough to hold it in. Despite his decoration as a soldier for the church, it was becoming more and more apparent that Ludwig came with some sort of fragility that few knew how to handle. The fragility had made him cold and somewhat unapproachable to others, but for Simon, it was a light that beckoned him in just as the sword had done for Ludwig years ago. He couldn’t believe it.

He also couldn’t believe_ this_. Ludwig had found the other’s waist in the midst of his rapid-fire thinking, spiraling into thoughts and sensations in the back of his mind as his hands took up the willpower to do the real work. Simon seemed pleased, his chest pressing forward until they were nothing but a horizon of flesh pressed against flesh. The lean waif of a man was clamoring into the warmth of Ludwig’s arms, legs pushing to bring them closer until there was no where else to go. Ludwig was overwhelmed, face hot and hands shaking as he struggled to accommodate all that Simon was.

“You touch me like you are _afraid_ of me.”

Simon taunted against Ludwig’s ear, the gauze that covered his unseeing eyes tickling against the hunter’s temple.

“_I am_ afraid of you.”

Ludwig had started to feel up the notches in the other’s spine, carefully ticking over them with the pads of his careful fingers. It wasn’t until he had noticed that the other did not laugh nor snort at his remark that he realized Simon was peeling back from his ear to find his neck, instead. Silence was replaced by the quiet noise of cold breath against the curve of his adam’s apple, lips following suit. The harrowed was kissing at him, nipping and tasting and licking, having all that he wanted, as a scarf of gooseflesh raised embarrassingly across Ludwig’s neck. Did it always happen like this, he wondered - it had been so long, he struggled to recall a time when it happened this fast. Like a war had started in a blink of an eye, like a new spring had erupted and the world was reborn in the time it took to take a breath.

“I am afraid of wanting you.”

Ludwig’s low voice continued, finding itself. His fingers carved down into Simon’s back, locking him in place, urging him to continue taking whatever it is he wanted.

“I am afraid of needing you, too. Afraid of losing you. I look for you in the dark, when I am alone with the lights. I think they like you, whatever it is that they are, the gods inside me - they search for you even when I sleep. And,”

Simon was determined - his jaw slack with shaky breath and thin, scarred arms pushing Ludwig back into the riverside grass. Obliging, the Holy Blade reclined into the cold, dew-kissed earth, bringing the other along with him.

“I miss you when you ride too far ahead on that awful mule of yours. I think about you when I kill a beast, and wonder if you are proud of me. I think about protecting you, and I think about how I never do well enough at it,”

Ludwig yammered on, the flood gates opening as he thumbed across the thin gauze across Simon’s eyes, feeling over the eyelids he could not see, wondering how they looked since the harrowed lost most of his sight fighting at his side. His voice was shaking at the end of it, his confession spoken into Simon’s neck, or at his clavicle, or rolled off to the side when the thin hands working down his chest and abdomen became too much.

“I think about loving you.”

Ludwig whispered and felt the the lights ignite. Simon stopped, the world stopped, his heart dropped through his ribs and down into the earth. Time stopped, started again, and stopped once more. The world was reborn, the clock was turned back - life began anew. Simon laughed.

“What,” Ludwig began, the sudden realization of his impulsive words rushing up to him, “what is it, what are you laughing at - are you laughing _at me_, are you,”

“You told me to be quiet. You even asked nicely.”

Ludwig grappled with the words, watching the other’s face with a near-frightened expression. How could a man be so smug all the time, he wondered as his brows knitted together in some sort of frustration.

“I think about it too, you know, sometimes.”

Simon whispered, drawing his finger down the bridge of Ludwig’s nose, then over his lips, across the five o’ clock shadow that had started to grow across his strong jawline in the absence of a razor. He raised Ludwig’s chin then, holding it between his index finger and his thumb, instructing the church hunter’s gaze upwards. Swallowing, Ludwig waited - Simon always had some sort of stinger, some pointed remark that would undo him in one fell stroke.

“But I don't have to think much about things I already know.”

And there it was. The arrow that pierced right through him.

The arrow that shattered all the restraint and self-preservation he had upheld year after year in the other’s presence, the arrow that shot right through his chest and into the soil beneath their bodies, urging him to act. The arrow that made him throw his face upwards and take what he needed, wanted, and had dreamed about again and again.

Ludwig kissed him and felt the the nightmare end.


End file.
